Multi-scale dynamical description Gram-negative bacterial responses to antibiotics towards drug resistance

Contemporary medicine struggles with bacterial infections on a daily basis. The ongoing challenge is to describe how these organisms adapt and protect at different levels when attacked by drugs. In the presence of these agents, colonies of bacteria carry out myriad processes at the molecular, genetic, and cellular scales that grant resistant against intruders threatening its survival. Even though mechanisms of specific processes in different scales have been characterized, a framework that integrates the processes at different scales remains absent. Here we propose a dynamical model that integrates these scales in the context of bacterial survival and efficacy of drugs. Using experimental inputs, our approach produces testable outputs that are in agreement with empirical data. In general, this framework provides a mathematical tool to test stress response strategies in organisms that can potentially guide experiments in natural and synthetic cellular systems.